Dr. Boyce: When Caught Harassing Women, Just Haul Out Your Wife

Presidential candidate Herman Cain is pulling all the stops to cover the intense damage that’s been done in the midst of his sexual harassment scandal. Cain has finally brought his wife Gloria out onto the campaign trail, perhaps to divert media attention and show that there is at least one woman on the planet who doesn’t see him as the creepy old man who scares women at the office.

Cain’s actions seem to fit the standard hypocritical Republican recipe for political redemption: When women from your past come out and reveal that you’re an undisciplined sexual deviant whose private life is in stark contradiction to your self-righteous public life, you get your wife to stand next to you at a press conference. Rather than dealing with the person that Cain really is, the media might actually be tempted to focus on his wife, who is simply another lifelong victim of “The Hermanator” and his antics.

I feel badly for Gloria Cain. The poor woman is, quite honestly, being made to look like a fool. She’s the woman standing by her man even though he himself has been standing by a slew of other women over the years. She’s the new Ginni Thomas, Clarence’s wife, who supported her husband as the nation heard stories about his fascination with porno flicks and Long Dong Silver.

I don’t condemn Herman Cain for liking women, Lord knows there’s nothing wrong with that. I condemn him for pretending that he’s better than the rest of us, lying about the allegations, and destroying the careers of women who came into his path. That’s what makes me lose respect for him, at least in the workplace.

Mrs. Cain has been absent from the Cain campaign until now. I presume it must be because they were saving her for a special occasion. She’s stood beside this oddity of a man for the last 43 years, so she’s already too far invested to run for the hills. So, there the poor woman sits, forced to lie to the world by telling us that Cain’s other female victims are making things up. In spite of the evidence, witnesses and a lack of serious denial on the part of her husband’s team, Mrs. Thomas, I mean Mrs. Cain, is being asked to dumb herself down and pretend that she doesn’t know the things that she’s probably known since the 1970s.

Rather than attacking one another, these women should be dealing with the man in the middle. Cain’s wife should not be forced to deal with his messes.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.